Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6799872" data-attributes="member: 85870">I think you're slightly misreading @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a>'s point. If narrative momentum is more important than "playing out" climbing a cliff, then the only reason to introduce a cliff as part of a scene frame is if the challenge is large enough and the stakes of failure are high enough that the challenge should be mechanically resolved in play. It's not that level 20 PCs never encounter cliffs less challenging than the Cliffs of Insanity (tm). It's that cliffs that AREN'T the Cliffs of Insanity (tm) don't need to be resolved mechanically, because they're absolutely not important to the momentum of the narrative. You handwave those suckers and be done with it. In fact, if you want to apply some "fail forward" techniques to it, or want to make it more interesting, you tell the players, "You absolutely won't fail this climb, but depending on your level of success, it might introduce some complications." I do this ALL THE TIME with my group, and Savage Worlds makes it easy to do with its gradated levels of success (standard / raise). If you ascribe to narrative- and scene-frame based playstyle, if you're still forcing level 20 PCs to make Climb checks every time they run across a piddly 40-foot cliff, as a GM you're doing it wrong.</blockquote>